Hi,

 

Just moved into a new home, the previous owners haven't even given us some keys so not a great handover. There's a veritas R8 alarm system that's off at the consumer unit. We've got five sensors in Hall, Landing, Kitchen, Living room, Dining room. We turned on the alarm at the consumer unit the other day and punched in the default user code followed by the default engineer code and the zone lights came on on the keypad. We tried to do a walk through test but it doesn't work as the online instructions suggest. The battery in the control panel is 22 years old so we're gonna change that but just wondering if anyone had any advice? One of the sensors doesn't light up - is it likely it's just broken? Just after any information from anyone with experience. Should we just upgrade the system?

It's likely a Pre-2K model (Red LED) so manuals you are finding online would be wrong.

If you have no service history of the system then it's 22 years old and done a turn, pretty sensible to upgrade.

Equally it could be something an installer can give a check over, service and you get a bit longer out of it.

If it's only one sensor it could be faulty or the LED switched off.

If your not confident it getting it straight consider having an engineer look at it. If all the wiring is fine then I'd expect you would only need the electronic bits replacing so minimal mess, take no longer than a day.

 

41 minutes ago, MH17 said:

Hi,

 

Just moved into a new home, the previous owners haven't even given us some keys so not a great handover. There's a veritas R8 alarm system that's off at the consumer unit. We've got five sensors in Hall, Landing, Kitchen, Living room, Dining room. We turned on the alarm at the consumer unit the other day and punched in the default user code followed by the default engineer code and the zone lights came on on the keypad. We tried to do a walk through test but it doesn't work as the online instructions suggest. The battery in the control panel is 22 years old so we're gonna change that but just wondering if anyone had any advice? One of the sensors doesn't light up - is it likely it's just broken? Just after any information from anyone with experience. Should we just upgrade the system?

Upgrade for sure

As previous suggestions, either upgrade or get it checked over by a security installer,

just think if you DIY it & you don’t configure something correctly or it fails to work because it has a undiagnosed issue when it needs to then you will kicking yourself (false economy) 

 

As above if it 22 yrs old you might be able to resurrect some of it but I'd question faith in something so old with unknown service history.